Chocolate Chips Muffin

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These Chocolate Chip Muffins are moist, loaded with yummy chocolate chips. They are easy to make yet so very sinful.

Hola People so there’s a lot going on with the blog lately. I didn’t post last week because I was preparing for my September Baking Challenge. Didn’t I tell you already? Okay I am taking part in a month long blogging challenge – The #MyFriendAlexa activity in association with BlogChatter. To keep things short – I’ll be posting 8 recipes this month and my challenge hashtag is #BakingWithTina. You can search with this hashtag on Twitter and Instagram for all the posts this month – if you have not followed me already, do that now!

To give you a short background on this – when I moved over from Blogger to WordPress self-hosted site, I lost all my blog followers. So I am left with some 4 followers now. This is the current report card of my blog and you can see my reactions against each metric. 🙁

I am joining this activity with some clear objectives. At the end of the activity I am hoping to

1. Grow some traffic – can’t quantify this.
2. Get at, least 20 more followers through blog subscription / email subscription
3. Grow my Alexa rank by few – hundreds maybe?
4. Have 30 more Followers in each of my Twitter and Instagram accounts
5. 30 more Likes on the blog Facebook Page

So people you know I need a lot of love in there.

I am hoping to clear all the above listed points at the end of the month. I’ll post a report card against the current one on October 1, 2016 to see where I stand and how worthwhile it was to be in the activity. 

So where were we, chocolate chips eh?

My son has really taken to cakes and cookies – he is 1 yr and 1 month old as of now, has 4 and half teeth (he teethed quite late) but enjoys chewing on cookies. The first baked cake with egg he had was his 1 year birthday cake that I had baked for him ( I will put up a post on that this month). But now he’s quite a pro at munching on cakes, cookies or even baked casseroles. So I need to bake some muffins or cupcakes every now and then.

I had made these chocolate chips muffins for his 13^th month birthday (we celebrate his birthdays on all months! And yeah, you can call us crazy).  I had originally started out to make chocolate chip cupcakes, but this tiny man was making himself so busy in the kitchen that I never got any time to make the frosting – so I am calling it a muffin.

This is a step by step photo post. This is my go to recipe for muffins, had read it in some magazine long time back. I simple add or subtract ingredients or flavoring to make different versions. But the basic muffin recipe is same.

Getting Started

Prepping the flour is very important for any cake / bread baking. Without a little baking powder and baking soda your cakes won’t rise properly. So mix 1 tablespoon baking powder and 1 teaspoon baking soda to 2 and ½ cups of regular flour, which has been sifted.

Prepping Chocolate Chips

Most important thing to keep in mind while adding any small bits in a cake batter, is to mix it with some flour. Else it will sink in the batter and you will have a barren top and all chocolate chips will flock together at the bottom. Take 1 tablespoon of flour from your measured flour mix (no extra flour, plz) and add it to the chocolate chips to coat them well. This way they’ll not sink to the bottom.

I am using L’exclusif Baking Chips by Godrej Natures Basket for this recipe. I found them pretty nice.

Prepping Liquid

We’ll be using milk in the batter. So keep it ready alongside the flour, because they go in simultaneously. I am also using fresh vanilla scraped from the pod. You can alternatively use vanilla extract if you don’t have fresh vanilla pods.

Pro tip – Don’t throw the vanilla pods after scraping. Keep it in your sugar jar. You’ll have extremely aromatic sugar. Thank me later!

Preparing the Batter

Cream together butter and sugar with a whisk or hand mixer / stand mixer. Break and add 2 whole eggs – one at a time and mix till it’s all creamy.

Pro Tip: Keep the eggs broken in a separate bowl. You don’t want to ruin your batter with a piece of egg shell. I have learnt it the hard way.

Add vanilla extract and beat for few seconds.

Now ditch the mixer and get a silicon spatula, or anything like that. We have to fold now, not mix.

Add in milk and flour alternatively. I’ll do it in 5 parts – flour, milk, flour, milk, flour. With this you will never have lumps, nor will your batter get runny or dry. You have better control this way.

Add chocolate chips and mix. Let the batter rest for 10 mins.

Arranging the Muffins

Line a muffin tray with paper liners – this way you don’t have to grease pan, or worry about batter sticking here and there.

Pour batter in the liners using an ice cream scoop or ladle. I think it gives better control on the measurement and I know it’s getting divided equally.

Baking

Bake them in a pre –heated oven in two parts – first at 200C/392F for  5 mins and then at 180C/356F for 13-15 minutes or till a tooth pick inserted at the center comes out clean. The browning of muffins differs from oven to oven, I have noticed. I use my microwave with convection setting for all my baking stuffs. I generally use the shorter wire stand while baking so that I get some color on my stuffs. So even if it it’s not browning it’s okay.

Rest the muffins on a wire rack to cool down for 15 minutes at least.

 Notes

I have noticed when you have rested your cake batter well, they rise well. I baked my muffins in two batches because I have a 6 cup muffin tray and this recipe makes 10-12 muffins. The ones in the second batch rose much better than the first one. I don’t know the science behind it, but that’s how it works for me.

So guys hope you will enjoy this September Baking Challenge with #BakingWithTina.

Let me know your thoughts, or the kind of posts you want me to share.

 

I am taking my Alexa Rank to the next level with Blogchatter #MyFriendAlexa. Stay tuned for September Baking Challenge #BakingWithTina and follow me on Twitter & Instagram